Philosophy
RAE 2008 - the results
See how our philosophy research scored in the Research and Assessment Exercise 2008.
Research leader:
Professor Dan Hutto
The Department of Philosophy at Hertfordshire provides an intellectually stimulating environment for research. The research interests of individual staff members are diverse, wide ranging, and are not limited to a single philosophical tradition, school or period of philosophy. The topics they pursue often drive them to engage in interdisciplinary research.
Philosophers at Hertfordshire have an international profile and presence. They publish with leading presses (Blackwell, CUP, MIT, Routledge, OUP) and in top-ranking journals (e.g. Analysis, Journal of Philosophy, Mind and Language, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Synthese). They are regularly invited as keynote or plenary speakers at important conferences. They win competitive funding from major research organizations (AHRC, ESF, Marie Cure, Mind Association, RIP); are awarded prizes and honours by prestigious organizations (APA, UNESCO); serve on the executive committees of significant academic associations (BPA), learned societies (BWS), and research funding bodies (AHRC, ESF).
In the 2008 national Research Assessment exercise (RAE), 90% of the research profiled in the Department was rated as ‘internationally recognised' or 'internationally excellent' in terms of originality, significance and rigour. This was a significant improvement on RAE 2001, This is line with general upward trend within the University of Hertfordshire, which rose up the rankings in the Times Higher Education Table of Excellence, moving from 93rd place in 2001 up to 58th in 2008.
The department has several major areas of concentration and strength:
- Ethics, broadly construed, including the relation between narrative, literature and ethics; information and computer ethics; Kantian ethics; philosophical and religious aspects of love and friendship; the moral status of animals and the environment; moral agency. • Philosophy and Ethics of Information
- Philosophy of mind, psychology and cognitive science, especially, on topics relating to information; representation; perception; consciousness; phenomenal consciousness; intersubjectivity; folk psychology and enactive, embodied, extended approaches to the mind, philosophy of AI. Research on these topics is both philosophically and empirically informed and focused;
- Metaphysics, with strengths in time, perception, consciousness, idealism and structural realism.
- The work of specific thinkers, including Kierkegaard, Sellars, and Wittgenstein. Research supervision areas include:
-metaphysics, logic, philosophy of language, philosophy of fiction, philosophy of science: Craig Bourne
-philosophy of perception, the philosophy of Wilfrid Sellars, rule-following: Paul Coates
-philosophy of mind, philosophy of perception, metaphysics: Sam Coleman
-epistemology, philosophy of information, philosophy of logic, information and computer ethics, philosophy of technology: Luciano Floridi
-phenomenology, philosophy of mind, cognitive science, hermeneutics, self and personal identity, philosophy of time: Shaun Gallagher
-enactive, embodied and extended cognition, phenomenal experience, intentionality, folk psychology, narrative and personhood, metaphilosophy, Davidson, Wittgenstein: Daniel D. Hutto
-philosophy of mathematics, Hegel, informal logic, philosophy of education: Brendan Larvor
-Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, ethics (especially the virtues), continental philosophy of religion, philosophy and psychotherapy: John Lippitt
-Wittgenstein, philosophy of literature, philosophy of art: Danièle Moyal-Sharrock.
